Civic Marshall Plan/Building a Grad Nation
With AT&T, America’s Promise Alliance,
Everybody Graduates Center at John’s Hopkins University,& the Alliance for Excellent Education

A coalition of leading U.S. organizations gathered in March 2010 to develop an action plan for ending the U.S. dropout crisis once and for all. The strategies for achieving this goal became known as the Civic Marshall Plan (CMP). As a key part of the larger Grad Nation campaign, the Civic Marshall Plan’s goal is a 90 percent graduation rate nationwide with all students ready for college and the 21st century workforce. Like its namesake, the CMP focuses on using the main levers for which there is evidence of success in addressing the dropout problem, and emphasizes a multi-sector approach that engages national, state and community stakeholders in different roles to effect individual, community, state and national outcomes. Each year, an annual update is produced that highlights progress and challenge in implementing the Civic Marshall Plan.

Counselors
With the College Board & Hart Research

School counselors are highly valuable professionals in the education system. Yet, they are also among the least strategically deployed. This is a national loss, especially given that school counselors are uniquely positioned in ways that many educators are not to have a complete picture of the dreams, hopes, life circumstances, challenges, and needs of their students. We are at a crossroads in American education and in defining the role our nation’s counselors will play to help improve student achievement. To understand the perspectives of the more than 100,000 counselors in America, the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center’s National Office of School Counselor Advocacy, Civic Enterprises, and Peter D. Hart Research & Associates collaborated to survey 5,308 middle and high school counselors, which is one of the largest national surveys of these education professionals.

Early Warning Systems                                                                
With AT&T & the Everyone Graduates Center at John's Hopkins University

Many of America’s children are on track for success, but far too many are falling behind. In fact, in America today, one in four children fails to graduate from high school on time. Even fewer finish college. Now, Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems (EWS), a key benchmark in the Civic Marshall Plan to Build a Grad Nation,  can help change that. The report “On Track for Success: The Use of Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems to Build a Grad Nation” is the most up-to-date and comprehensive view on these cutting-edge systems, informed by site visits and interviews with educators in 16 districts and seven states. The report overviews the research, shares emerging best practices from the field, and provides policy recommendations. 

Public Media - American Graduate
Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Recognizing a need to help students stay on the path to graduation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), with participation from PBS, America’s Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is announcing an innovative new program, American Graduate, to combat the dropout crisis in this country.

American Graduate brings public media together with key community stakeholders to improve student engagement and raise academic achievement. Local public radio and television stations are at the core of this initiative.These stations, located in 20 community “hubs,” will serve as the center of community interest and activity around high school graduation rates.

The Better Days Campaign
With AARP & Our Time

Civic Enterprises, AARP & Our Time are connecting thought leaders, policymakers, advocates and the general public to the critical discussion around retirement security.

The goal of the Better Days campaign is to engage the public and key policy makers in a conversation about new ways Americans can save for retirement. Its online forum (betterdaysproject.org) serves as a "one-stop-shop" for the retirement security discussion, bringing together all stakeholders and views in one place, to stimulate bipartisan conversation around new ideas, engage thought leaders from both political parties in an inclusive way, undertake to encourage discourse and debate among Presidential-candidates in the upcoming election, and deliver actionable ideas that can make an impact.

The National Conference on Citizenship

Since 2006, Civic Enterprises has worked with the National
Conference on Citizenship, the Corporation for National and
Community Service, and the U.S. Census Bureau to release an annual Civic Health Assessment to measures America’s civic habits across a wide range of indicators in an effort to strengthen citizen participation in their communities, states, and nation.

Service World

President Kennedy said that his Peace Corps would be
a serious enterprise when 100,000 Americans were serving
abroad each year. Service abroad is not only morally worthwhile thing to do, it also serves our vital national interests in subtle but important ways. Cross-border compassion will bring Americans and volunteers of different countries, cultures, races, ethnicities and religious beliefs together in common purposes. Such work will increase prosperity, lead to a more informed foreign policy and build a more peaceful and secure world.

ServiceWorld is a powerful coalition now working to pass legislation that will boost international service efforts. The bill should be namd the Sargent Shriver International Service Act to honor the man who, 50 years ago, built the Peace Corps.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Survey
National Peace Corps Association, Peace Corps, Hart Research, MCJ, Duke University, Brandeis University

Civic Enterprises in partnership with the National Peace Corps Association and Peter D. Hart Research, released the first large-scale, independent, nationally representative survey of the more than 200,000 Peace Corps volunteers who have served since 1961to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Peace Corps Act.

The report was sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation, the Case Foundation, MCJ, Duke University, and Brandeis University.